Dr. Sanjay Gupta is one of my CNN heroes as he and his team bring a variety of medical news to the common man through the blog ‘pagingdrgupta’ making information more easily available. Here are a couple of links relevant to allergy sufferers:
The latest document released by AAAI (American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology) contain the guidelines for the best practices for management of a disease where there is no current treatment – the first ever of its kind.
http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/06/docs-get-guide-for-iding-food-allergies/?hpt=T2
The second link addresses the dangerous prevalence of bullying food allergy sufferers . Hard to imagine that young children can find food allergies funny and a sign of weakness leading them to bully kids suffering from severe food allergies. However, I have come across moms who are doctors expressing annoyance with the schools their kids go to for not allowing them to send an easy peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If doctor moms don’t get it – how do we expect a middle-schooler to get it?!? Maybe the idea that its not their problem and the allergy sufferer should look out for themselves is being perpetrated through unconscious social cues. The media definitely plays an active role in furthering this …almost every other sitcom has one laughable character with food allergies – Dr. Niles Crane from the otherwise brilliantly made ‘Frasier’, Howard from ‘Big Bang Theory’. In an era when McDonald’s can be sued for fattening people and Dunkin Donuts for scalding hot coffee – food allergies, in my opinion, is a far more serious issue! CNN got an overwhelming response to their article “Food allergies make kids a target of bullies” http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/09/28/food.allergy.bullying/index.html
As a food allergy sufferer or their caretaker, the link to the following blogpost is an eyeopener to what is out there:
http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/29/allergy-bullies-in-school-your-thoughts/?iref=obinsite
Allergy Foodie 